The Xhosa speaking people, in common with other African people, possess a rich folklore tradition comprising mostly of tales, proverbs, riddles and poetry. Of these verbal arts, proverbs are by far ...the most frequently employed, in a number of ways for different purposes. In their daily communication, the Xhosa speaking people often resort to proverbs as an important and most effective strategy to optimize the rhetorical effectiveness of their speech messages. Because proverbs are frequently used in normal, everyday speech situations, the Xhosa speaking people, like any other African communities, assign great socio-cultural importance to the proverbs. This paper explores the moral nature and significance of the Xhosa proverbs which contribute to the norms and conventions and cultural wisdom well-ordered society. In the Xhosa culture, a feeling for language, imagery and expression of abstract ideas through compressed and allusive phraseology is realized in proverbs. Data were gathered from two published sources in Xhosa language titled
by EWM Mesatywa (1954) and
by JA du Plessis (1978). The data for this paper also included my knowledge, experience and introspection, based on being a Xhosa native speaker and experienced academic in language-related culture dimensions of African languages.
The present paper analyzes the category of interjections in Xhosa within a prototype approach. The evidence demonstrates the robustness and internal complexity of the interjectional category. ...Interjections ranges from canonical and asystematic to non-canonical and (relatively) systematic, with emotive primary interjections entertaining the highest extent of interjectionality and asystematicity.
This article seeks to establish how and why compliance-gaining transpires in a Shona family set-up. Much research has been done on persuasion in the Western and Eastern cultures, unlike in Shona ...culture. In this article, we focus on persuasion strategies between a married Shona couple and establish the degree of directness and indirectness of their requests. The term 'compliance-gaining' is used interchangeably with the word 'persuasion' in this article as they both refer to the same process. Compliance-seeking and compliance-resisting strategies used by Shona married couples, and the persuasive message dimensions used by sources in such influence interactions, are illustrated. In so doing, the sequence of the persuasive arguments and counter-arguments, as well as the clinching argument, in a persuasive message of a married Shona couple are identified. Furthermore, it is hoped that this research article will provide insight into Shona persuasion strategies and skills and contribute important perspectives to the existing body of knowledge of persuasion.
Cua is a Central Khoisan language spoken by a diminishing population in the central and eastern parts of Botswana. Adults and younger children still speak it. However, school-going children begin to ...develop negative attitudes towards it and shun the use of the language in public and family domains. Although chiefs in resettlements are Cua-speaking and therefore have to instill positive attitudes in the use of the language, there are no organised advocacy associations and no revitalisation endeavours in place to ensure the promotion and preservation of Cua. While elders speak of the wish to maintain the language for posterity and for the celebration of culture, they are devoid of the means to accomplish that. Because it is spoken in a geographically compact area of 2 400 km2, and by a comparatively sizeable community of 2 000, it shows some resilience. The article discusses the situation of Cua from the view point of language endangerment in the first instance by characterising the sociolinguistic vitality of the Cua community. Secondly, it addresses the conditions (historical, policy, and demographic) that demonstrate that the language is also threatened with extinction, like all other Khoisan languages in the region. The language and cultural policies of Botswana, which do not cater for minorities, are identified as the main forces behind the ethnic and linguistic demise of Cua.
Khoisan languages are spoken by tiny and remote-dwelling communities of Botswana, the members of which are characterised by socio-economic hardships and illiteracy in their own languages and in ...general. Historically and socially, these people emerged from a life of hunting and gathering, and, in that lifestyle mode, they were easily subdued and exploited by other language communities for cheap and serf labour. Colonialism found them in this social state, and post-colonialism has left them in the same state. As poor and marginalised subalterns, they have not had any means to advocate for their language and culture, and are currently assimilated into other peoples’ languages and cultures. Consequently, the remaining languages of these communities, spoken in remote areas by poor people, are threatened with extinction because they remain under-developed, under-documented, and are at best still at the stage of documentation by anthropologists and linguists. As illiterate people, the speakers of these Khoisan languages have no survival strategies for their languages in this ever-evolving, modern world. With their poverty and sociolinguistic marginalisation, they are devoid of any means of promoting their languages. This discussion focuses on the pitiful situation of the Khoisan languages of Botswana. Botswana’s language-use policy will be critically examined and characterised as one factor in the marginalisation and disempowerment of minority groups, both of which lead to the languages’ endangerment and death.
Developed within the frames of cognitive linguistics and grammaticalisation theory, the present study analyses the relationship between the performative function in isiXhosa and its grammatical ...encoding in terms of tense and aspect. The evidence demonstrates that isiXhosa conforms to the cross-linguistically pervasive pattern relating performatives with determined types of temporal-aspectual grams. The compatibility with the performative function increases with the advancement of grams along the imperfective path, but decreases with their advancement along the anterior path. This relation further suggests a temporal-aspectual foundation underlying performatives, namely their completive essence (i.e. the idea of being completed).
Tsua lexical borrowing from Setswana Chebanne, Andy; Dlali, Mawande
South African Journal of African Languages,
20/1/2/, Volume:
37, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
The sociolinguistic dynamics of the situation of the Tsua (an endangered Eastern Central Kalahari Khoe language) has resulted in the language being spoken in limited social communication domains, ...such as with family and close friends. The use of Setswana now pervades all communication domains. Those that still have knowledge of Tsua code-switch and code-mix often. Certain basic concepts are readily expressed in Setswana. The use of borrowed words from Setswana is characterised by adoption of Setswana terms and translation of Setswana concepts into Tsua, resulting in phrasal concepts and new terms that are not in the Khoisan lexical stock or phonology. This article firstly characterises the language-use constraints that Tsua speakers experience. Secondly the situations that oblige them to borrow from Setswana are demonstrated. Further, the article discusses Tsua lexical data that show the nature, domains and phonological characteristics of this borrowing. The hypothesis made in the discussion is that lexical borrowings fulfil two important linguistic roles, namely to fill the sociocultural and linguistic gaps that exist in Tsua and Setswana and to typify the rate of endangerment of Tsua.
In South Africa health care practitioners are commonly professionals who speak only one, or at most two, of the languages spoken by their patients. This provides for language provision challenges, ...since many patients are not proficient in English or Afrikaans and ad hoc and haphazard arrangements are made for interpreting by untrained personnel. As part of a larger study (conducted in 2010) in a public psychiatric hospital, we report here on the potential consequences for diagnostic assessments of 13 psychiatric evaluations mediated by ad hoc interpreters who were employed as health care workers and household aides. The psychiatric evaluations were recorded and transcribed verbatim. The first author checked for accuracy of transcription and translations, and the two members of the author team who are both senior African language academics rechecked transcription and translation. We used the typology developed by Vasquez and Javier (1991) to study interpreter errors (i.e. omissions, additions and substitutions). All errors were independently rated by a senior psychiatrist and a senior clinical psychologist to determine whether the errors were likely to have a bearing on clinical decisions concerning the patient and to rate whether errors deemed clinically significant contributed to making the patient appear more ill psychiatrically, or less ill. Of the 57 errors recorded, 46% were rated as likely to have an impact on the goal of the clinical session. Raters concurred that the clinically significant errors contributed towards potentially making the patient look more psychiatrically ill. Detailed analyses of evaluations demonstrate the complexity of informal interpreter positioning regarding issues of diagnosis and cultural factors in illness. Evaluations conducted where clinicians and interpreters are not trained in language and interpreting issues may create a distorted picture of the patients' mental health conditions.
•Ad hoc interpreter practices could have clinically significant consequences.•Interpretation errors may contribute towards making the patient appear more ill.•South Africa's public health sector requires quality interpreting services.
The main purpose of this article is to examine the linguistic pragmatics of advice in Setswana. This article will attempt to present an account of the speech act of advice within the broad framework ...of Brown and Levinson's (1987) politeness theory and explore a range of features of advice in Setswana. The research methodology employed includes a range of new strategies with respect to both the compilation and analysis of empirical data.
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